William Barr Quotes

When a President asserts constitutional powers he needs to be pretty certain he has those powers.

The Military Commissions Act gives the President the privilege of kings.

The President cannot refuse to enforce a law simply because he does not like it.

President Obama's decision to bypass the constitutional advice and consent of the Senate is not an isolated incident.

Executive Privilege

What a President may do as a matter of expediency or extremity may never reach a definitive constitutional decision.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

I don’t know if President (George W.) Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making.

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”

Are you willing to let any President choose what laws to enforce and what laws to change?

That a district judge would overrule the president of the United States on a matter of border security in wartime is absurd.

As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.

When a president makes up law as he goes, no one knows what the law is anymore.

How exactly the obstruction-of-justice statutes interact with the president's broad powers to supervise the executive branch under Article II of the Constitution is a genuinely difficult question.

I believe the attorney general or the deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to the President.

A president shouldn't tell the judiciary what to do.

I do not agree with the use of 'signing statements' to effectively act as a line-item veto, except when the President believes a law or a provision within a law is unconstitutional.In general, if a President signs a law, they are committing themselves to enforcing it. If they don't believe it should become a law, they should veto it.

When the president acts in absence of a congressional grant of authority, he can rely only upon his own independent powers. When the president takes measures incompatible with the express or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.

Nonetheless, so whether it's unconstitutional or not [for judges to overruling presidents], I leave to others.

When I'm president, we'll have executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day

Trump's attacks against the judiciary reflect his view that only he should be able to decide what he can and cannot do.

The secretary of defense makes recommendations, sometimes will make strong recommendations to the president of the United States. But the president, whoever it is at that time, decides, makes the call on whether or not to take that recommendation.

Executive privilege is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and thus is a very limited principle.

Love or hate the outcome of what Trump has decided to do, keeping or scrapping DACA is outside of his authority as president. The executive branch enforces the law; it does not make it.

I have a duty to protect the Executive Branch from legislative encroachment.